Heathrow's two runways should be extended and then cut in half to add capacity think tank says

Heathrow's two runways should be extended and cut in half to create four full-length take-off and landing strips, according to a report published today.

The move would nearly double capacity at the airport which currently handles 480,000 flights a year but is already 99per cent full, it argues.

The ‘quick, quiet and cost-effective’ solution – including the creation of a sixth terminal called ‘T6’ – would retain the West London airport’s status as the UK’s major air hub while reducing noise and sidestepping opposition to a new third runway.

Full: Heathrow airport is full to bursting and the only realistic solution is the airport's expansion says the Centre for Policy Studies report

The Centre for Policy Studies report,
written jointly by Captain William ‘Jock’ Lowe, Concorde’s longest
serving pilot, and Mark Bostock, promoter of the Channel Tunnel rail
link to London, claims the plan is a ‘brilliantly simple solution’ to
the question of airport capacity in the UK.

‘Heathrow is full,’ it says, before adding: ‘The only realistic solution to UK airport congestion is the expansion of Heathrow.’

The CPS think-tank paper says both
of Heathrow’s existing runways should be extended up to a total length
of about 7,000 metres and then divided ‘so that they each provide two
full-length runways allowing simultaneous take-offs and landings’.

It says the plan ‘would have overwhelming economic benefits for the UK’.

The report calls for the creation of a new air, rail and road transport interchange immediately north of Terminal 5.

It would connect the airport and its
passengers with the M25 motorway, Crossrail from 2018 and the Great
Western Main Line into London and out to the West Country and Wales.